THE WILD MAMMALS OP THE FARM 97 



even with early social aflEairs and military enterprises. The 

 beaver and the badger and the wolverine and the bison rightly 

 occupy a place on the seals of certain of our states. 



These fiaae quadrupeds, once so abundant, are gone from 

 our settled country. Save for a remnant, preserved in 

 reservations, largely as a result of private enterprise, the 

 bison is entirely gone. The others are crowded to the far 

 northern frontier. We have fur-bearers still, and also a fur 

 trade : indeed, more money is spent for furs now-a-days than 

 ever before in the country's history. But our furs are now 

 derived from animals, which but a generation ago were mainly 

 considered hardly worth skinning. The four native mammals 

 which now chiefly supply the market are, in their respective 

 order, muskrat, skunk, oposstim and raccoon, with the mink 

 still furnishing a lesser proportion of much more valuable 

 skins. These are obtained in considerable numbers from all 

 parts of the country stiU, but the getting of them is no longer 

 a man's work. It is rather the recreation of the enterprising 

 farm boy. 



The white man brought with him to America all the differ- 

 ent kinds of mammals that he now uses. He found none 

 domesticated here. The Indian was a hunter: not a 

 husbandman. The white man was a more ruthless hunter, 

 equipped with better weapons. The Indian would no more 

 Idll oflE all the beaver and otter on his range, than the stock- 

 man would dispose of all his herd. He kept a portion to 

 breed and renew the supply. But the white man, having his 

 domesticated animals to fall back on; slaughtered the wild 

 ones ruthlessly without regard for the future. Indeed, the 

 wantonness of the slaughter of some of them — ^notably of the 

 bison — ^is a disgraceful chapter in otir country's history. 



The mammals that are of great importance to man fall in 

 three groups: hoofed aniinals, beasts of prey and rodents. 

 There were some fine native hoofed animals in North America. 



